Daniel ‌Marin, Founder of Nexus, on Enabling the Verifiable Internet, Aggregating Unused Compute Power, ZK Tech, and Verifiable AI | Ep. 434

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April 29, 2025

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Daniel Marin, founder and CEO of Nexus, joined the Cryptonews Spotlight Podcast to explore how his team is building the foundation for the verifiable internet – a world where zero-knowledge proofs (ZK), distributed computing, and verifiable AI redefine trust and computation.

From Stanford dorm rooms to the edge of ZKVM innovation, Marin offered clarity on why Nexus is built to scale, what makes verifiability essential in the AI era, and how unused compute power can fuel a new kind of decentralized network.

The Market May Be Shaky – But Builders Are Steady

“We’re still on spooky time, but that doesn’t mean we should panic… Ups and downs give rise to opportunities for those who are well prepared.”

Marin remains optimistic despite market uncertainty, believing that uncertainty breeds opportunity, especially for projects heads-down in product development.

The Aha Moment That Launched Nexus

“The Nova paper showed how to combine proofs – and that’s when I realized we could build one of the first verifiable machines ever.”

Nexus was born after Marin saw how proof aggregation could enable scalable zkVMs, creating the foundation for a verifiable Layer-1 blockchain.

Building the zkVM Stack, One Machine at a Time

“We’ve launched zkVM1, zkVM2, and now zkVM3 – which is about 1,000x faster than zkVM2.”

Marin’s team is developing a multi-generational zkVM stack, each version improving speed, parallelism, and memory efficiency.

Why Verifiability Matters More Than Ever

“In a world where we no longer know what is true and what is not, we need mathematics to tell us what’s real.”

From deepfakes to AI hallucinations, Marin believes the future depends on systems that can prove correctness cryptographically.

ZK Is About More Than Privacy

“With ZK, you can prove an image’s origin… or that your AWS job ran exactly the algorithm you intended.”

Marin sees ZK tech as the foundation for trusted computing, spanning from media verification to secure cloud workflows.

The New Frontier: Aggregated Compute

“We don’t run a marketplace. We orchestrate massive computations across the network and reconstruct them from proofs.”

Nexus is not a GPU rental service – it’s a decentralized supercomputer, distributing massive jobs across idle devices globally.

Why Proofs Unlock Global Coordination

“Without proofs, you can’t verify if third parties computed something correctly… With them, you can build trust into compute.”

Proof systems like ZK allow untrusted actors to collaborate – and get paid – without the risk of false computation.

Nexus OS and Restaking for Compute

“Think of it like EigenLayer but for compute. Recompute, not just restake.”

Marin hints at future modules where users can opt into compute programs, earning rewards from multiple partners – not just Nexus.

Scaling Solves Itself With More Nodes

“In Nexus, the more nodes you have, the faster the blockchain gets.”

Unlike traditional blockchains that slow down as they decentralize, Nexus is designed to speed up with more participation.

The True TAM Is Every Connected Device

“We would feel accomplished once a Nexus node script is running on every computer, tablet, and phone.”

Marin envisions Nexus as a global computation protocol, with billions of nodes powering proofs and AI verification tasks.

Why Verifiable AI Will Be Everywhere

“Everything we do is AI – and we just cannot see a world where software and AI don’t become synonyms.”

AI is eating software. Marin believes every application will be AI-powered, and Nexus will verify that the intelligence is correct.

Proofs for Matrix Multiplication and AI Inference

“We accelerate matrix, vector, and tensor ops in zkVM to prove AI outputs efficiently.”

Nexus is optimizing zkVMs to verify AI workloads like inference and training, starting with the mathematical primitives that power modern models.

The AI Double-Check Layer

“You should be able to invoke a swarm of agents that question an answer – and give you 99% confidence that your data is right.”

Marin envisions a world where AI models check each other’s outputs, creating adversarial AI loops that ensure correctness.

From Cybersecurity to Deepfakes, Verifiability Is Critical

“You build the blockchain – but now you have to attack it in a million ways… We’re building the infrastructure to do that.”

Nexus isn’t just about building – they’re also automating stress tests and security audits using adversarial AI techniques.

What’s Next for Nexus

“Testnet 3 is launching this quarter – and mainnet is coming in Q3. We’re just shipping and shipping and shipping.”

Marin confirms that the final testnet and mainnet are coming in 2024, with a clear focus on execution and traction.